American Fight Clubs

“Both up to the minute and timeless, Lommasson’s pictures are also affecting, intricate and sometimes just glorious.” – Richard Lacayo, Time Magazine

“As these gyms disappear . . . the essays [in Shadow Boxers] . . . and photographs brought together in this documentary will provide a valuable portrait of this historic American institution.” – The Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University

"What the jukebox was to Robert Frank, who traveled America in the 1950s photographing and codifying American culture and life, the heavy bag and spit bucket is to Lommasson, who photographed the effluvia and detritus of more than 100 gyms. Coast to coast and up to Canada, boxing gyms are places of peeling stucco, naked light bulbs and dirty mirrors, his images tell us. But they are also places of contradiction, where boxers tape their hands with the delicacy a ballerina uses to tape her feet, and where gum-ball machines coexist with broken noses.” – Victoria Blake, The Oregonian

"It is those battles and those dreams that Shadow Boxers captures in a triumphal procession of words and pictures such as no Roman emperor ever dreamed of. This is a book truly for those with a reverence for the traditions of the sport.– Bert Sugar

"A great many wonderful writers from W.C. Heinz on down have found worthy material in boxing, and the same can be said of lots of talented photographers. Shadow Boxers is a fine addition to the library of boxing-related works, and you don't have to enjoy or even condone the sport itself to appreciate the book.” – Bill Littlefield, NPR

"An insider's vivid, surprising look at a world most of us never get a chance to see—a world of battle-weary veterans and bright-eyed newcomers, of surrogate fathers and ancient skills and sanctuary from the mean streets just outside the door. Not to be missed.” – Geoffrey C. Ward, author, Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

"In portraits and candid shots, of pros and amateurs and youngsters who can’t even reach the speed bag, Lommasson reveals not just the grit and toil of a disappearing world, but also an unexpected sense of community and even of sanctuary. While Shadow Boxers never blinks at the toughness, it does take the reader straight to the heart.” – Sports Illustrated

“As real and as honest and as raw as the paint peeling from the walls.” – Inara Verzemnieks, The Oregonian

"The photographs alone are worth the cost of admission. Jim Lommasson approaches his subject with the hard-hitting nostalgia of Annie Leibovitz, alongside whose photos of bluesmen, rockers, and gospel singers these fighter shots necessarily belong.” – The Cyber Boxing Zone